And They Called It Camelot: A Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis

by Stephanie Marie Thornton

Frost poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

“I’m the best-read Kennedy alive because of that football injury.” “Yes, well, that’s because your sisters haven’t read anything besides the Social Register in years, and Ted is still on Dick and Jane books.”

With a daiquiri in hand, I leaned against an onyx pillar to watch Jack approach the eighty-year-old leviathan that was Winston Churchill, whom I’d briefly met almost a decade before at a Buckingham Palace garden party during my debutante’s tour of the Continent. This Churchill, with his bulbous, pink-veined eyes, looked even more exhausted than the war-weary politician of 1947, although he’d recently retired as Britain’s prime minister. Jack might have been mistaken for Apollo that night in his white tuxedo and crisp summer tan, but I could smell his tang of nerves as he neared Churchill. “Good evening, sir.” Jack’s head was bowed in reverence to this titan among men, one of Aristotle Onassis’s antique leather-bound volumes open on the elder statesman’s lap as he sat before the lapis lazuli fireplace. That very titan glanced up with a pinched scowl as he puffed away on a ubiquitous cigar, several more jammed into his pocket. “It’s about time you got here,” he chewed out, and I watched as tension melted from Jack’s shoulders. Until Churchill picked up his empty Scotch glass and shook it at Jack. “Get me another one of these, will you?” If I hadn’t been so angry at my husband, I’d have gone to soothe Jack’s crestfallen expression at being mistaken for one of the tuxedoed waiters. Instead, the despondent and broken part of me wanted to laugh that Jack wasn’t the golden immortal he thought he was, especially when he slunk away, dejected by his idol. “Bonsoir, Madame Kennedy.” ...

Even in death, there can be beauty and hope, if only we dare to look hard enough.

November 22, 1963 Air Force One touched down in Love Field with a teeth-jarring thump, and minutes later, the cabin door swung open to admit such a blast of scorching sunlight that the First Lady instinctively shielded her eyes against the unusual November brightness. In this, the first scene of an act she and her husband had replayed during each stop during this show-the-flag trip to Texas, she sniffed at the warm, oil-smelling Texas breeze and smoothed the skirt of her watermelon suit as the president stepped alongside her. “Last stop.” The president’s unstaged line was murmured so only she could hear. “We’ve made quite a team this trip.” Her smile made her almond-brown eyes sparkle as they stepped onto the tarmac. “Always.” Then they were in character again, waving their way down the metal ramp to greet Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson in the same silly masquerade that had been staged for each crowd of waiting Texans. Aides pressed local papers into the president’s waiting hands while the First Lady accepted the ubiquitous welcome bouquet from the Dallas mayor’s wife. The unseasonable heat made their fragrance almost cloying. She had been greeted with Texan yellow roses—meant to convey welcome—in every other city, but Dallas’s bouquet was a shocking shade of ruby red. Everyone knew red roses symbolized love, but the White House floral staff had taught her they also represented regret. And sorrow. She didn’t have time to ponder that, for the president’s expression went gray ...

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” There seemed to be a collective inhale as Jack held us in his thrall, his words coming in puffs of frost in the bitterly cold air. “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

Arthur Miller, illustrious playwright and ex-husband of Marilyn Monroe, was seated next to me, and he pushed his spectacles higher on the bridge of his nose, the deep grooves of the smile lines around his mouth delving ever deeper. “I’d have thought you’d have seated me with Pushinka out in the doghouse rather than in the place of honor.” I traced the rim of my wineglass with one manicured finger, for I’d maneuvered the bespectacled playwright’s seating card directly to my left only this morning. “And why is that, Mr. Miller? Because you were once suspected of being a Communist? Or because of your ex-wife’s performance for my husband?”

Now it was time for both Jack—who since the Cuban Missile Crisis had dealt with escalating tensions in Vietnam and riots in Birmingham, where fire hydrants were turned on peaceful protesters and police dogs were loosed onto a teenage boy—and me to unpack our schedules and relax.

Jack had given me a king’s ransom in jewels over the years, but already I knew that this ring would be special, that it bound together our history and our future. “I love it,” I said. “Almost as much as I love you.” I startled to see two-year-old John suddenly appear at the doorway in his blue pajamas, his dark hair tousled and cheeks rosy from sleep. He glanced around the room and broke into a toothy grin, then pointed at his father and yelled, “Poo-poo head!” Jack and I stared at each other; my husband’s gray-green eyes twinkled with barely restrained mirth. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody call the president of the United States a poo-poo head before.” Our son let out a chortle of glee, then turned and pounded back up the stairs as we burst into laughter. Jack’s face mirrored my simple joy in that moment.

“‘When the world is storm-driven and bad things happen,’” I recited, “‘then we need to know all the strong fortresses of the spirit which men have built through the ages.’”

It was there that I numbly learned of how Bobby had lain in an ever-widening pool of his own blood after he’d been shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian who faulted Bobby for his avowed support of Israel after the previous year’s Six-Day War. I swayed in my limo seat to learn that Bobby had still been cognizant after he was shot, had clutched a rosary someone pressed into his hands and whispered to the ambulance attendants not to lift him onto a gurney before he finally lost consciousness. He was awake. Dear God, he was awake after it happened.

I knew that every word I spoke into the bank of microphones mattered, that the short, punchy speech I’d labored to write on the flight from Paris would be more effective than an hour-long diatribe. “Is it not cruel to let our city die by degrees, stripped of all her proud monuments, until there is nothing left of all her history and beauty to inspire our children? If we don’t care about our past, we can’t have very much hope for our future. We’ve all heard that it’s too late, or that it has to happen, or that it’s inevitable. But I think if there’s great effort, even if it’s the eleventh hour, that you can succeed and I know that’s what we’ll do.”